A webdesign brief document for every website

Posted by Benedikte Vanderweeën on 27/02/2009

It’s no luxury to make a document for every website that you design. A document with a design description. Before starting a webdesign project, a webdesigner collects lots of information. You get a lot of information in your mailbox (clients tend to send you everything by e-mail), you receive a logo, a brochure and text for the webdesign, that’s about it. Over the years, I collected everything nicely in a folder with the name of the client. I still work this way but I add a design brief to every project now. The client receives also a copy of this document. It’s important information, my clients use this document for marketing material that they afterwards (after the launch of their website) need to order.

In the introduction part of the document, you explain the aim of the document, the name of your client and the name of the website. Point out that it is an agreement that both parties agree on. The document describes how the website will look and feel and how the visitor will experience the website.

Point out some Milestones in your project. To accomplish the milestones throughout the project, a good communication between you and your client will be needed. Agree on some dates where you will be meeting each other to communicate the project. It's important the client knows this before the projects starts.

Try to describe the objective of the website. Client's do not always understand what you mean by this, but it is a good starting point to clear this out with your client. An objective can be to attrack more visitors for an event, or attrack more customers for a product, it can be about offering a tool to the visitors or to expose a new brand to the public.

Try to describe the target groups of your website and try to imagine you are one of the target group: this group can be students, older people, kids, women, people between 20 - 60 yrs and so on. Describe as much detail as you know about this group. There can be more then 1 target group.

Mostly the graphic design of the website will need to be related to all above things. Also the logo plays an important role in the graphic approach of a website. Try to feel what your client likes and try to convince with mock-ups you made. This is a difficult part, because your taste is not always the client's taste. It's important that by the beginning of the project you try to feel what a client really likes and what not. Mostly I start with my own style, my own design approach of the project. Write down a few words accordingly to your client, the activities, the product. Does the style has to be innovative, high-tech, etc?

Describe the interface of the webdesign. Visitors should be offered an inuitive and easily understood interface, with clear navigation. Try to keep the interface design not to overwhelming. Offer your content in a clear and easy way. Visitors should to able to navigate the website easily.

Give special attention to the homepage of your website. Does the homepage shows every aspect of the project? Does it show the purpose of the project? Try to analyze your work by showing your design to people that can give constructive comments. You can submit your work to graphic design forums and ask for some feedback on the design. The homepage of a website mostly gives an overall impression of the other pages of the website.

Make a list of items that are important to webdesign standards. Explain it to your client and emphasize the importance of using these standards (speed, clear code, compatibility,user-friendly, accessibility, more future proof, content separate from design, etc..). Give examples of other websites by designers that support webstandards and mark the importance of using it.

Include some basic navigation in your footer, like the address and telephone number of the company, copyright statement, sitemap, credits, other places on the web where the company has information stored.